Every dark cloud has a silver lining.

I am on silent probation (so by some unspoken rule, I get all the kak patients for now), and it's been an exhausting, back-breaking, mind-numbing kind of day.

Not only have I been working since the crack of dawn, which was about 12 hours ago, but my patients have all had some element of risk, resulting in 12 hours of continuos, low-level, stress-hormone release from my poor adrenals. I'm not unable to work for so long, but thanks to "operation relocation", my career-fitness level has taken a bit of a dive...

Also with no real friends around, no coffee-break, no lunch (ag shame), the day somehow feels longer and lonelier. Reminds me of those blokes on the street corner with the cardboard signs around their necks ... You know, from my previous life ...


Anyway the last patient, is a lady that's about 95 in the shade, femur fracture, cardiac disease, cancer, and a fanatical family of ten children. Need I say more... Her induction is shaky, her intubation a nightmare resulting in 2 dislodged front teeth, (an anathema to any anaesthesiologist by the way), and her bloodloss substantial for her age. Other than that, her surgery is successful. Very importantly, the metal is in the bone! We even manage to wire her teeth back into place!! Decent damage-control I'd say!

So off we go to ICU, for some TLC.

It's my virgin flight to ICU, so I haven't met the staff yet, but I expect my reception to be much the same as everywhere else so far.

I hand my notes to a really sweet-looking fellow, do a hand-over in my best, broken greek, help get the old lady settled, and sink down into the nearest chair ... just for a minute or so...

The sweet-looking fellow, with the first, truly friendly, face I 've seen around here, offers me a cup of coffee. He seems shocked to hear that I've survived the day without any form of nourishment whatsoever. ( Secretly, I'm quite surprised too, but hey, they don't need to know that!) Two seconds later, a mug of steaming coffee in my hands, he earnestly explains where all the restrooms / tearooms are situated. Obviously he feels about these places, as an air hostess would about the exits marked in red on board an aircraft.

I don't bother telling him that I'm totally rigting-bef*%. That I would, only with time, find the watering holes myself, but let him ramble on. He definitely doesn't fit into the chauvinistic mould that the majority of males on this island seem to be cast from! I'm really surprised! Pleasantly so!

With every subsequent ICU visit (have I mentioned my probation?), I get to know him better.
Each time over a cup of coffee, that's been made for me exactly the way I like it, nogal by a cypriot male.

I realise that things are really not that bad, as long as I keep an eye out for that silver lining.